Lipitor and other Statin Drugs,
Side Effects, Neuromuscular Degeneration, and Recovery

Summary: You don't need to take Lipitor
or other statin (cholesterol-lowering) drugs to prevent heart disease or
lower cholesterol. If you do, you will probably regret it. This article
presents a natural alternative. Please read on...

Numerous adverse side effect reports have implicated
Lipitor and other statin drugs as a probable cause for severe neuromuscular degeneration.
Thousands of people have become disabled. Some
people who have been using Lipitor or other statin drugs for as little as
two months report serious muscle weakness and pain. Many who have taken it longer report
much more serious symptoms,
similar to Muscular Dystrophy, Parkinson's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis or ALS - Lou Gehrig's Disease - in which
they are losing neuromuscular control of their bodies or losing
significant muscle mass. Others have
reported serious liver and kidney damage. Still others have been told that they have nvCJD, the human equivalent of mad cow disease.

The danger of the statins has been known for years. For instance, in an article entitled "Life After
Lipitor" that appeared in the newspaper Tahoe World on January 27,
2004, Tahoe City (California) resident Doug Peterson began having serious
neuromuscular problems after taking Lipitor for two years. He began losing
muscular coordination and slurring words when he spoke. Then he lost
balance, followed by loss of fine motor skills - he had difficulty
writing. He went from doctor to doctor, trying to figure out what could be
happening. Finally one doctor suggested that he stop taking Lipitor, and
the downward health spiral slowed, but the damage had been done.
The drug had apparently caused cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative
disease that causes deterioration of the cerebellum.

The adverse effects began appearing in
peer-reviewed medical journals, and numerous people have reported similar
symptoms at public adverse effect reporting websites such as medications.com. People have reported "trouble swallowing, trouble
talking and enunciating words, feeling fatigued all the time, neck aches,"
"motor neuropathy which mimics ALS," "Blinding headaches,
nausea, vertigo, disorientation, memory loss, extremely dry eyes, pain and
stiffness in my neck and calf muscles, abominal pain," and
"Muscle pain, weakness, spasms, buzzing in right leg. Can't hold arms
or head up in vertical position for 2 minutes without extreme pain and
weakness."

How could Lipitor and other statin drugs potentially cause this kind of harm to
so many different parts of the body? Lipitor is a "statin" drug
which inhibits the production of cholesterol in order to lower LDL
cholesterol counts. By severely limiting the production of cholesterol, Lipitor
causes membrane degeneration in neural and muscle tissue.

A new book published by a doctor-writer husband and wife
duo - How Statin Drugs Really Lower Cholesterol: And Kill You One Cell at
a Time by James B. Yoseph and Dr. Hannah Yoseph - documents the fraud and
deception by which Lipitor and the other statin drugs were licensed, and
the damage that it does to every person that takes them.

The problem is this: cholesterol is essential in your
body for many functions. It forms part of what is called the cell membrane
- the semi-permeable outer layer of every cell in your body. Without enough cholesterol there is
an insufficient supply, and eventually nerve cells and
neurons die. In addition, our tissues are constantly being repaired and
replaced with new cells. As we age our body needs even more cholesterol
for cellular repair. Without sufficient cholesterol this cellular
repair and replacement cannot continue.

Our body produces several thousand
milligrams of cholesterol per day and essential fatty acids in our liver to carry out these essential functions,
and each day the excess of cholesterol is supposed to be naturally
recycled. If your body doesn't have enough new cholesterol each day, you
cannot repair and replace your cell membranes and they will eventually
degenerate.

The continual recycling of cholesterol happens naturally
when you have sufficient ascorbate, another name for vitamin C. Excess
cholesterol is naturally converted to bile acid and then excreted. But if
you don't consume enough vitamin C (about 2000-3000 milligrams per day for
an adult), cholesterol builds up in your bloodstream. It is here that
doctors make a critical error: instead of telling you to take more vitamin
C to recycle cholesterol naturally, they prescribe Lipitor, which may
create a deficiency of new cholesterol.

Lipitor and the other statin drugs act by disrupting one of the most
important chemical cycles in the human body - the Krebs cycle. By doing
this, Lipitor and other statin drugs also block the production of an essential
micronutrient called Co-Q10, necessary to maintain heart muscle health,
and Lipitor has no effect on lipoprotein(a), the actual sticky protein that
constitutes heart disease "plaques." So instead of preventing
heart disease, Lipitor may be increasing heart disease risk.

It appears that Lipitor and other statin drugs are in fact causing neural and muscular
cell degeneration by over-restricting the production of cholesterol and
Co-Q10. This is a very serious matter
indeed. There are at least 40 million people - some say as many as 60
million - who take Lipitor or other statin drugs (Zocor, Pravachol, Mevacor,
Altocor, Lescol, Crestor, etc.). Many millions more are now having statin
drugs recommended to them by their doctors. It is likely they are all
going to become victims of cell membrane degeneration and nervous system
problems.

There are few
long-term studies that bear out the safety of these drugs. Pfizer, the
manufacturer of Lipitor, has acknowledged on their public website that side
effects such as "muscle pain or weakness" could be a "sign
of serious side effects," and has even put a name on the condition -
rhabdomyolysis - previously a rare disease usually
only caused by traumatic injury - but these are classified as
a reason for people to stop the medication rather than an indication that
the drug should be withdrawn or banned.

Dr. Duane Graveline, scientist, family doctor, and former astronaut
for NASA, wrote a book called "Lipitor, Thief of Memory" (available
on Amazon.com) after suffering from transient amnesia as a result of
taking Lipitor, and has published three subsequent books: "Statins - Side Effects
and the Misguided War on Cholesterol", "Statin Damage Crisis", and
"The Dark Side of Statins", available at his website at
http://www.spacedoc.net.In these books he has documented hundreds of
cases of neurological and neuromuscular degeneration.

Safe, natural regimens instead of Lipitor and other
statins

What is most horrifying about this problem is that cholesterol balance
can be achieved without drugs, simply and safely by taking 3000-6000
milligrams of vitamin C per day, 1000-2000 mg per meal, for an adult, or
about 500 mg per meal for a 50-lb. child, with sufficient water intake, 2
quarts per day for an adult, 1 quart per day for a 50-lb. child. Unfortunately, vitamin C was
misclassified as a micronutrient in the 1930s and 1940s, rather than an
essential nutrient involved in dozens of body processes, including
continual repair of our arteries. Our health
authorities recommend that we take only 60 milligrams per day, barely
enough to prevent scurvy. The pharmaceutical industry has used scare
tactics to frighten people not to take vitamin C in the quantities
necessary for health or to give it to their children.

By the time we reach age 20 we have accumulated enough plaques to be
seen on an MRI or Ultrafast CT scan: we have the beginnings of
cardiovascular disease. When most people reach middle age they have enough
coronary artery blockage to be classified as cardiovascular disease. The
doctor prescribes Lipitor, thinking it will help, but instead it may cause
muscle degeneration in the heart and elsewhere and actually increase
coronary artery plaques.

Recommendations

Please do not take Lipitor or any other statin drug. It is likely
to ruin your health, and may cause you to become disabled.

If your doctor has prescribed Lipitor or another statin drug, or you
are already taking one of these drugs, I strongly urge you to consider
the following alternatives.

If you are under age 40 and have no significant
detectable heart disease symptoms, I urge you to avoid Lipitor and other statin
drugs, and instead click here
for a free download of an effective health regimen that will safely
prevent heart disease.

If you are over age 40 or have any significant symptoms of heart disease
and have not yet taken Lipitor or other statin drugs, I urge you to
read this article on its
root causes and consider purchasing the Natural
Therapy Guide for Cardiovascular Disease by clickinghere.

If you have been taking one of these statin drugs, no matter how
long, it is likely that they have done harm to your neuromuscular system.
You may have one or more of the adverse symptoms described above (muscle
weakness, pain, recent loss of memory). Please read on..

Recovery from Lipitor-induced damage

Considering the wide range of cellular degeneration that result
from use of Lipitor and other statins, it is impossible to know which
organ system should be the initial focus of recovery. The very first thing
that you can do is to stop taking any of these drugs and begin taking
large doses of vitamin C to maintain cholesterol balance. The
so-called "side effects" of the statin drugs are simply too dangerous and numerous
to contemplate continuing taking them.

I have developed
a multi-faceted regimen to address the cellular damage that is caused
by statin drugs and have written a health guide called Natural
Strategies for Recovery from Lipitor and Other Statin drugs.
You can click here to order this
health guide.

References:

Ginter E. Ascorbic acid in cholesterol and bile metabolism. Annals
of the New York Academy of Science. 258 (1975): 410-421

Rath M, Pauling L. Solution to the Puzzle of Human Cardiovascular
Disease: Its Primary Cause is Ascorbate Deficiency Leading to the
Deposition of Lipoprotein(a) and Fibrinogen/Fibrin in the Vascular Wall. Journal
of Orthomolecular Medicine 6 (1991): 125-134